VIDEO REELS – Page 38

Police violence in the United States: what lies behind the ‘bad apples’ narrative

2Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

VIDEO REELS

Police violence in the United States: what lies behind the ‘bad apples’ narrative

The May 25 video of George Floyd’s death sparked outrage and demonstrations across the United States as well as around the world. The direct responsibility of police officer Derek Chauvin is reflected in the charges – on June 3 were upgraded to second-degree murder, while three other officers were charged with aiding and abetting Floyd’s death. However, the interpretations of what lies behind Chauvin’s behavior and the underlying racism differ greatly, and frequently along political lines. Structural vs individual racism A frequent interpretation is that George Floyd’s death was an isolated incident by a “bad cop”. This is the prevalent view in the Trump administration and more generally among conservatives. It was clearly expressed by Robert O'Brien, the president’s National Security Advi...

Physicists hunt for room-temperature superconductors that could revolutionize the world’s energy system

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SCIENCE, VIDEO REELS

Physicists hunt for room-temperature superconductors that could revolutionize the world’s energy system

Waste heat is all around you. On a small scale, if your phone or laptop feels warm, that’s because some of the energy powering the device is being transformed into unwanted heat. On a larger scale, electric grids, such as high power lines, lose over 5% of their energy in the process of transmission. In an electric power industry that generated more than US$400 billion in 2018, that’s a tremendous amount of wasted money. Globally, the computer systems of Google, Microsoft, Facebook and others require enormous amounts of energy to power massive cloud servers and data centers. Even more energy, to power water and air cooling systems, is required to offset the heat generated by these computers. Where does this wasted heat come from? Electrons. These elementary particles of an atom move arou...

Police officers accused of brutal violence often have a history of complaints by citizens

2Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

VIDEO REELS

Police officers accused of brutal violence often have a history of complaints by citizens

As protests against police violence and racism continue in cities throughout the U.S., the public is learning that several of the officers involved in the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville share a history of complaints by citizens of brutality or misconduct. Decades of research on police shootings and brutality reveal that officers with a history of shooting civilians, for example, are much more likely to do so in the future compared to other officers. A similar pattern holds for misconduct complaints. Officers who are the subject of previous civilian complaints – regardless of whether those complaints are for excessive force, verbal abuse or unlawful searches – pose a higher risk of engaging in serious misconduct in the future. A study published in...

What are Asian giant hornets, and are they really dangerous? 5 questions answered

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

ENVIRONMENT, VIDEO REELS

What are Asian giant hornets, and are they really dangerous? 5 questions answered

According to recent press reports, two Asian giant hornets – a species not known to occur in North America – were found in northwest Washington state in late 2019, and a hornet colony was found and eliminated in British Columbia. Now scientists are trying to determine whether more of these large predatory insects are present in the region. Entomologist Akito Kawahara explains why headlines referring to “murder hornets” are misleading. Asian giant hornets (Vespa mandarinia japonica) drinking sap from tree bark in Japan. Alpsdake/Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 1. How common are these hornets in Asia, and how much alarm do they cause? The Asian giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia) is fairly common in many parts of Asia, where it is called the “Giant hornet.” Growing up in Japan, I saw them relatively freque...

Touching the asteroid Ryugu revealed secrets of its surface and changing orbit

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SCIENCE, VIDEO REELS

Touching the asteroid Ryugu revealed secrets of its surface and changing orbit

On Feb. 21, 2019, we shot an asteroid. More precisely, the Hayabusa2 spacecraft, built and operated by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, fired a 5-gram metal projectile into the surface of the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu, a spinning-top-shaped body about 1 kilometer across and some 350 million kilometers from Earth. This projectile disrupted the surface of the asteroid, allowing Hayabusa2 to capture some of the lofted material and tuck it safely away on board. Having departed from Ryugu in November 2019, Hayabusa2 is expected to fly past Earth in late 2020 and release its samples in a reentry capsule for detailed analyses in labs across the world. Asteroid Ryugu photographed from a distance of about 12 miles (20 kilometers) looks just gray and bland, but a close-up provides m...

The killing of Ahmaud Arbery highlights the danger of jogging while black

2Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

VIDEO REELS

The killing of Ahmaud Arbery highlights the danger of jogging while black

Unsteady cellphone footage follows a jogger – an apparently young, black man – as he approaches and attempts to run around a white pickup truck parked in the middle of a suburban road. Moments later he lies dead on the ground. Footage captured the last moments of Ahmaud Arbery’s life. Atlanta Journal-Constitution/Youtube The killing of Ahmaud Arbery took place on Feb. 23, after the 25-year-old was confronted by Gregory McMichael, a 64-year-old former police officer and investigator for the Brunswick, Georgia district attorney’s office, and his 34-year-old son, Travis. It took 10 weeks to gain widespread attention with the circulation of video footage on social media, prompting revulsion and calls for justice. Gregory and Travis McMichael were both taken into custody on May 7 on charges o...

VIDEO: What does lockdown mean for the world’s poor?

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS, VIDEO REELS

VIDEO: What does lockdown mean for the world’s poor?

Severe restrictions on travel and economic activity have been imposed in many parts of the world. For the poor, recessions have always meant starvation, lack of medical support for diseases including HIV treatment programmes, and in particular the deaths of infants and children vulnerable to malnutrition and childhood disease. What do the restrictions mean for these people? That’s the question a new 30 minute documentary seeks to answer – by asking the people who are most affected. The documentary is the result of a collaboration between the Institute for the Future of Knowledge at the University of Johannesburg, and the not for profit organisation Picturing Health. It features interviews with market traders, community workers, and ordinary people in Uganda, Malawi, Zambia, and India. Exp...

A majority of vaccine skeptics plan to refuse a COVID-19 vaccine, a study suggests, and that could be a big problem

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS, VIDEO REELS

A majority of vaccine skeptics plan to refuse a COVID-19 vaccine, a study suggests, and that could be a big problem

The availability of a vaccine for the novel coronavirus will likely play a key role in determining when Americans can return to life as usual. Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on April 30 announced that a vaccine could even be available by January 2021. Whether a vaccine can end this pandemic successfully, however, depends on more than its effectiveness at providing immunity against the virus, or how quickly it can be produced in mass quantities. Americans also must choose to receive the vaccine. According to some estimates, 50% to 70% of Americans would need to develop immunity to COVID-19 – either naturally, or via a vaccine – in order to thwart the spread of the virus. If these estimates are correct, that could mean that nearly twic...

What are the ‘reopen’ protesters really saying?

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

IMPACT, VIDEO REELS

What are the ‘reopen’ protesters really saying?

The “anti-lockdown” and #Reopen protests in the U.S. have powerful and secretive backers, but there are real Americans on the streets expressing their opinions. As an ethnographer – someone who studies cultural participation – I’m interested in who those Americans are, and why they’re upset. I spent the last week in what you might call an online road trip, studying 30 posts of protest footage from events in 15 cities. I found some shared themes, which don’t fit well with popular narratives about these protests. Protesters object to handouts, but want work. 1. Poverty is taboo, but work is ‘essential’ Despite the economic toll the lockdowns are taking on America’s poor, no protesters put their own poverty on display, such as posting signs asking for help. Instead, they held signs with mo...

2Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SOCIAL JUSTICE, VIDEO REELS

The Reshaping Of Afrofuturism

After the movie Black Panther became a cultural landmark in 2018, it’s appeared as if Black people have been an integral and natural presence in science fiction. That hasn’t always been the case. Science fiction as a genre has been around since the 1920s, when the namesake of the field’s prestigious Hugo Awards, Hugo Gernsback, coined the term. However, the first widely notable Black sci-fi characters in U.S. popular culture wouldn’t appear until 1966, with the first the Black Panther character appearing in Marvel comics, and Lt. Uhura appeared on the bridge of the starship Enterprise in the first season of Star Trek. The Black characters, stories, and even the creators in the genre have had to struggle to gain a foothold. So, when scholar Mark Dery coined the term “Afrofuturism” in 1993,...